Turkey said yesterday it would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to reinforce fellow Kurds in the Syrian town of Kobani, while the United States air-dropped arms for the first time to help the defenders resist an Islamic State assault.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington had asked Ankara to help “get the peshmerga or other groups” into Kobani so that they could help defend the town on the Turkish frontier, adding that he hoped the Kurds would “take this fight on”.

US air-dropped arms for the first time to help the defenders

If the reinforcements come through, this may mark a turning point in the battle for Kobani, a town that has become a frontline of the battle to foil Islamic State’s attempt to reshape the Middle East.

The Syrian Kurds have struggled for weeks against better armed Islamic State fighters. US-led air strikes have helped the Kurds avoid defeat, but they have been unable to resupply fighters besieged on three sides by Islamic State and blocked by Turkey from bringing fighters or weapons over the border.

Ankara views the Syrian Kurds with deep suspicion because of their ties to the PKK, a group that waged a decades-long militant campaign for Kurdish rights in Turkey and which Washington regards as a errorist organisation.

Speaking in Indonesia, Kerry acknowledged Turkish concerns about support for the Kurds, and said the air-drop of supplies provided by the Kurdish authorities in Iraq did not amount to a change of US policy.

He indicated that the battle against Islamic State, a group also known by the acronym Isil that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq, was an overriding consideration.

“We understand fully the fundamentals of Ankara’s Opposition and ours to any kind of terrorist group, and particularly, obviously, the challenges they face with respect to the PKK,” he told reporters.

But he added: “We cannot take our eye off the prize here. It would be irresponsible of us, as well as morally very difficult, to turn your back on a community fighting Isil.”

Iraqi Kurdish official Hemin Hawrami, writing on his Twitter feed, said 21 tons of weapons and ammunition supplied by the Iraqi Kurds had been dropped in the small hours of yesterday.

Kerry said both he and President Barack Obama had spoken to Turkish authorities before the air-drops “to make it very, very clear this is not a shift of policy by the United States”.

“It is a crisis moment, an emergency where we clearly do not want to see Kobani become a horrible example of the unwillingness of people to be able to help those who are fighting Isil,” he added.

Turkey has stationed tanks on hills overlooking Kobani but has refused to help the Kurdish militias on the ground, suspicious of their links to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and demanding broader US action that would target Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as Islamic State.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara was facilitating the passage of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, which are also fighting Islamic State in Iraq.

Cavusoglu stopped short of saying whether Ankara backed the US decision to air-drop the weapons.

The spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) peshmerga fighters said that the Iraqi Kurdish region was ready to send backup forces to Kobani and planning was underway.

“There are efforts and we are prepared to send some back-up forces either by land or air,” said KRG peshmerga ministry spokesman Jabar Yawar. He said the forces were not en route.

But one Kurdish official in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed doubt that any fighters would be deployed to Kobani as they battle Islamic State at home.

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